My career started in General Internal Medicine and I then trained in Neurology at the Middlesex and National Hospitals in London. I was appointed as a Consultant in Neuro-otology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in 1980 and in 1992 became Professor of Audiovestibular Medicine at the University of London,based at UCL. I came to the UCL Ear Institute in August 2008 to lead academic Audiovestibular Medicine, which remains a relatively new specialty and the EI unit is the sole academic unit in the UK. I am the Director of the UCL MSc programme in Audiovestibular Medicine and supervisor to a number of PhD, MD and post-doctoral students across a range of topics including genetic, autoimmune and noise induced hearing loss, paediatric vestibular disorders, novel vestibular rehabilitation, auditory electrophysiology, efferent auditory dysfunction and auditory processing. Alongside my academic and research interests, I also enjoy a busy clinical practice, with particular interests in vestibular diagnosis and rehabilitation and central auditory processing.

My main research interest is genetic hearing loss and together with colleagues within UCL we have just completed the National Collaborative Usher Study supported by Sense and funded by the Community Fund. Previously, I have researched autosomal recessive and X-linked hearing loss and Pendred Syndrome. My research with a number of colleagues in UK and abroad has also focussed on newborn hearing screening in the developing world (Nigeria), animal immunohistochemistry in autoimmune inner ear disease, auditory processing in neurological disease, novel vestibular rehabilitation strategies e.g. virtual reality and new diagnostic vestibular techniques eg vestibular evoked myogenic potentials.

I have authored more than 120 peer reviewed research papers, chapters in textbooks, and am an Editor of the “Textbook of Audiological Medicine” and a Co-Editor of Scott Brown’s: “Otolaryngology, a Handbook of Vestibular Rehabilitation and Noise and its Effects” - both of which won the George Davey Howells Prize of the University of London.